Victoria is a high school student doing a research paper on board
games. She needed a professional in the field to interview, and
having recently granted a student
interview about my activism,
it seemed only fitting that I respond to an interview about my actual job. Again, I figured
my readers would be interested in my responses too, so I'm posting
the questions and my answers here.

1. How did you first
become interested in games?

I've been into games ever since I was a kid. I think Sorry!
was the first game I got into, and from there I worked my way
up through Mousetrap and Monopoly to Risk and Chess and of course
all the games you can play with regular cards. Then computers
came along and I got into text adventures and video games, and
I started playing a lot of Hearts
with my buddies. Then I got into role-playing games and then live role-playing games and that's
when I first started getting involved with creating them rather
than just being a player.

2. What does your work
with games involve?

As the Creative Director for the fledgling game company I helped
start, I actually get to think up ideas for new games. But the
reality is, that's not what I spend most of my time doing. Thinking
up a new game is the easy part. What's much harder is getting
the rules to actually work and be fun, but even that isn't what
really takes up most of my time. It takes much longer to create
the art and develop the final materials for a new game, not to
mention working with printers to get things manufactured, assembling
game parts into complete games, promoting the game to stores and
customers, setting up booths at conventions, writing ad copy,
taking photos of the game for catalogs, building webpages about
the game, and so forth and so on etc etc etc.

I invented our
biggest hit in just one day, but the work of promoting it
is still taking up lots of my time!

3. What makes a game
good?

A good game offers the player the right mix of luck and skill,
of random events and strategic choices, a solid framework of complete
(but not too complex) rules, with a compelling theme, attractive
equipment, plenty of player interaction, a structure that leads
to a dramatic conclusion, and a clear victory condition at the
end.

Of course, opinions will vary as to what the "right mix"
of these elements really is... some players like games with very
little luck, while others prefer games that are mostly about luck.
I think the trick is to inject enough luck into the system that
when you lose you can feel like you just had bad luck, but are
also driven enough by skill that when you win, you can feel like
it was your skill at the game that led to your victory.

I also believe a good game is one in which you feel like you
still have a chance of winning until at or very near the end of
the game. When a player realizes before the game is even half
over that they stand no chance of winning, why should they want
to keep playing?

Of course it's great just having a job where playing games
is part of your job. But for me, the best part of being a game
designer is knowing that I'm bringing fun and happiness into people's
lives, all over the world. When a group of people are playing
a game like Fluxx and everyone is laughing and having a good time,
I've added more fun to the universe. Certainly, that group might
have had just as much fun doing something else, but they also
just as likely might have sat around being bored or doing something
less fun. The point is, I created that fun. It's an unbelievable
rush thinking that somewhere, at this moment, people are playing
one of my games and having a good time because of it.

For more thoughts on this, I again direct you to an essay I
wrote, this one called Fluxx
Love Stories.

5. What role do you think
games play in society?

I think there's something very basic and primal about the need
to play, and about the drive to compete at contests of skill.
The basic act of play -- of playing at being someone else in some
other situation -- is something we start doing as children and
never really tire of. Games are just more structured and competition-oriented
forms of play, which is why we say we "play" games.

Competition itself is also a primal instinct: Is not the survival
of the fittest the original contest of wills?

Games satisfy both of these primal urges, which I think is
why they loom so large in our culture. Games are everywhere, and
encompass everything from the games we make and sell to professional
sports, and even include elections, international feats of strength
like the Space Race, and the nightly battle for who gets the last
piece of dessert.

6. Can you think of an
example of a board game reflecting the culture it was created
in?

Certainly. I think there are many examples. There's Monopoly,
which came out during the Great Depression and became a big hit
because it was all about having and spending a lot of money at
a time when everybody was broke. Then there's Nuclear War, a card
game about wiping out humanity with nuclear weapons, a game that
came out in the early 60s and totally reflects the cold war era's
atomic worries. More recently there was a game called Burn Rate
which was about the dot com culture, in which players run fledgling
internet startup companies, with the goal being to stay in business
longer than anyone else. I think most games probably reflect the
culture they were created in, at least to some extent.

7. What do you think
the future is for traditional games?

I think the future is bright! Games bring people together and
encourage both mental stimulation and social interaction better
than most other forms of entertainment. A good game, bought once
and played many times, is also a more cost-effective form of entertainment
than most others. Of course, there are always more entertainment
choices competing for society's attention, and traditional games
are a niche compared with video games and even casino gaming in
today's world. But great though online gaming may be, there'll
never be a substitute for sitting around a table with your friends
and playing with physical, aesthetically-pleasing game pieces.
And as the popularity of table-top gaming in Germany has shown,
it has the potential to become much more popular here than it
currently is. Trends such as promoting individual designers, like
book authors, are helping to establish better markets for new
games. So I think it's a good place to be doing business right
now.

8. Do you have a favorite
board game?

My favorite games are the ones I've created myself. But setting
those aside, my favorite board game is Binary
Homeworlds, which is an Icehouse game designed by my life-long
friend John Cooper.
My favorite card game is Texas Hold'em, which I prefer to play
with Icehouse pyramids
rather than poker chips (a version we call Martian
Hold'em). So even when I try to set my bias aside, my answers
are still biased!

9. Do you have any words
of advice for someone interested in a similar career?

The short answer is: Forget it. Seeking to a become
a professional Game Inventor is like planning for a career in
Lottery Winning, or deciding you want to be an astronaut. Be realistic:
there just aren't enough opportunities in the field for any but
a very lucky few. You will need a real career.

The long answer is: Make sure you have a good day job,
and plan for game design to always be a hobby... but there are
a few things you can do to improve your odds of winning the career
lottery.

Obviously, I'm living proof that it can be done. But I was
lucky, and I first spent more than a decade working in a standard
career before becoming a full-time game-maker. And I made a heck
of a lot more money as a computer
programmer than I do at the moment in my current position.

The point is, you will need a Day Job. Just as actors trying
to "break into the business" frequently make their livings
waiting tables, you too will need a real source of income that
pays the rent and puts food on the table. You may even find that
you need income from other sources, so that you can invest it
in self-publishing your own works. For many who pursue game design,
it becomes only an expensive hobby, instead of the much-dreamed
of path to fortune.
All that said, designing games is a great hobby, and you never
know, you might just get lucky and strike gold. It's like trying
to plan for a career as a rock star. It's a long shot, but there
are a few things you can do to improve your odds. You can study
music, and learn to play an instrument, and you can start a band
with your friends, and practice in the garage, you can promote
yourself and your band everywhere you can, taking gigs for nothing
as you get started, all the while hoping that you'll have that
special magic that makes those few who succeed gain attention
while so many others give up the band and get real jobs someday.
And maybe you'll release a hit record! Who knows? It can and does
happen.

OK, so how does one improve the odds of becoming a successful
game designer?

1.) Play Lots of Games. To learn how to create games,
you must first know how to play games. Play them everywhere and
anywhere you can. Play to enjoy the experience and understand
how the game works, and don't get hung up on winning or losing.
Obviously, it's good to have a competitive spirit, but it's the
game itself, not the winner, that you want to focus on. Practice
being a good sport and a fun person to play games with, so that
you'll have many opportunities and friends with whom to play.
Join or create a regular gaming group so you have play time regularly
scheduled, and carry a deck of cards (or an Icehouse set!) with
you everywhere you go, so that you can pull out a game whenever
the going gets boring.

2.) Play Lots of Different games. Don't waste your
time becoming a chess master. It's possible to spend a whole
lifetime pursuing and enjoying the fine points of just one really
good game, but that won't teach you much about creating new ones.
It's much better for you to be playing a new game every week
than to keep on playing the same old favorites again and again.
Much as you may love them, you can't afford to spend too much
of your time continuing to play a game you already know.

3.) Learn to Think Outside the Box. It may sound cliché
but you should do whatever you can to cultivate your abilities
to see things in new ways, from new angles and different perspectives,
to question tradition and challenge conventional thinking, in
order to best offer the world what it most desires: that which
is truly new.

4.) Study Computer Programming. I may be biased, since
this was my original job, and unfortunately it's no longer the
lucrative field it was when I joined up, but I still believe
computer programming is one of the best skills you can develop
that will be useful for you in creating games. First, like I
said, you'll need something you can do that will pay the rent.
Secondly, if you have any interest in creating computer games,
knowing how to program a computer will make a big difference.
Thirdly, even if your interest is in tabletop games, the discipline
of programming hones many of the same skills you will need, as
there are many parallels between developing a set of game rules
and debugging a piece of software.

5.) Study Lots of Other Stuff, Too. You want to be
a knowledge sponge. You want to learn as much about everything
as you can... since games can be about anything, you never know
what subject it might be useful to be an expert on. I've always
been interested in history, and in time travel stories, and those
interests really paid off when I started working on Chrononauts.
Definitely choose a foreign language to learn, and start now
if you haven't yet. Learn a couple of languages if you can, but
you might want to consider choosing German, since parlor games
are bigger in Germany than anywhere in the world. (That's not
why I chose to learn German, but I'm glad now that I did!) Other
good subjects to consider studying are Business Management (since
you may end up running the business you have to start in order
to get your game published), Graphic Art Design (since games
need to look cool) and English (since your rules and marketing
text needs to be wrote out all good like with no misteaks).

6.) Get a Part-Time Job at Your Local Neighborhood Game
Store. I've never done this, but it seems like a good idea
to me. If you really want to get into the game business, you'll
do well to learn as much as you can about it, and nowhere is
better suited for such learning than at a game store. Assuming
there's a nice game store in your town, start going there often
and see if you can get a part-time job. Offer to work for free
(think Rock-Group-Accepting-Unpaid-Gigs) and cheerfully perform
undesirable tasks, so that they'll like you and let you hang
around even if they can't afford to pay you. Then soak up everything
you can learn. It might eventually become a way for you to get
a steady paycheck even if designing games isn't.

7.) Read. Start by reading my aforementioned Principles
of Game Design, some of which will echo what I've said here.
But don't stop there, search the net for other articles about
what works in game design and what doesn't. Then get the Game
Inventor's Guidebook, and read that, and read anything else
you can find on this subject. When you aren't playing games,
spend time reading about them. And don't watch TV! The TV will
teach you nothing useful about games. Just turn it off!